First Steps
by Lydia Hunter
Summary: The evolution of the Doctor's relationship with Rose Tyler, from beginning to end.


**First Steps**

**The Evolution of a Relationship**

_Author's Note: Don't know why I never put this up here before. :( Just a little prosery thing written up to and right after Doomsday first aired._**  
**

The first time he met her he liked her, because she didn't scream mindlessly at the Autons, and because she asked him an intelligent question. Were they students? Utterly wrong conclusion on her part, but she reasoned it out well, and he liked that.

The first time he held her hand —_really_ held her hand, not just "take my hand and run" — he told her he could feel the movement of the planet, feel the life coursing through it. He'd realised, much later, too late to back out, that in some small way he'd owned her soul from that moment onwards.

Later, after he'd saved her life a couple of times and she returned the favour by saving his, he asked her to travel with him. He hadn't had a companion in a long, long time, and he thought they'd make a good team. She ran to him with a grin that lit up the universe.

The first place he took her was to witness the end of her world, and he discovered she wasn't ready to deal with that kind of mortality yet. Later on he took her home to reassure her it was still there for her after all. Then he quietly told her his world was gone for good.

When they closed a time rift and stopped a parasitic race from taking over Earth, he learned to trust her instincts, because sometimes they were better than his. And he told her how glad he was he met her.

He brought her home a year past curfew, and got slapped by someone's mother for the first time in his long, long life. And he learned he could be paralysed into indecision because he might save the world and still lose her. Then he hurried her away from the consequences on account of his newfound horror of domesticity.

The first creature to accuse him of being in love with her was a bloody _Dalek_ of all things, throwing his precious emotions back in his face and making him face the truth. Even without the Dalek's taunt, he couldn't have faced dooming her a second time. What were a few more lives compared to hers? After all, wasn't he just as much of a killer himself, now?

On a strangely named planet with miles and miles of empty beaches, he took her hand and they stood at midnight under a hundred-foot frozen wave. There was magic in the silence, magic in the companionship, and magic in Rose's eyes. He almost broke his promise to himself there, feeling himself looking at her in a way he hadn't looked at a woman in hundreds of years. And he knew he'd never, ever bring anyone here again. (Just as he'd never, ever take Rose to the top of the Eiffel Tower.)

He knew he'd crossed the line the day he broke the rules for her, and not only once. What was a temporal paradox compared with a daughter's desire to meet the father she'd never known? What was the possible destruction of the world when matched against Rose's sad eyes? He'd never been so angry with her before, but it deep down it was himself he hated.

He told her not to wander off and surprise, surprise, she did. This time it was some pretty boy who saved her and not him. "He's like you, only with datin' and dancin'," she said. (He'd heard that before: "Doctor, he's like a younger you!") Jealous, possessive ... he was compelled to prove the Doctor danced, literally if not yet metaphorically.

Captain Jack, the latest pretty boy, turned into a fantastic ally, and his constant flirting with both of them brought their own raging flirtation back under control. At least for a time.

During a pit stop in Cardiff, she invited her old boyfriend, and the Doctor knew a jealous twinge over Mickey the Idiot. But it was the Doctor she talked about, the Doctor she ran to when things blew up, and Mickey slinking back home alone.

When he saw her die before his very eyes, he was dead himself. Moving on autopilot, unthinking, unfeeling. He learned she was only (only!) a prisoner of the Dalek fleet, and told her, "I'm coming to get you." And she wasn't scared anymore.

Trapped together, no way out, he tricked her and sent her home. She made the impossible possible and came to save him with the power of the universe in her hands, because she wanted her Doctor safe. For the first time he understood this was no unrequited love.

The first time he kissed her there was a good reason. Holding her in his arms, lips pressed against hers, it was what he'd longed to do for months. It was a kiss worth dying for. And he did.

Then he almost died for her a second time, awaking from a coma because she whispered, "Help me!" While he was busy almost dying again, she stood on her own, because someone had to be the Doctor.

On a world called New Earth they fell in love all over again, exploring their new/old relationship with a new, new Doctor.

Another kiss, this one leaving him breathless and delighted — until he realised she wasn't under her own control. He often wondered if she even remembered it, but they never talked about it either way.

They spent weeks, months, playing together, playing games through time and space, pretending that playmates was all they were, though both secretly knew the truth.

Eventually, she had to face what he'd told her before — there'd been others before her, and there would be others after. "You can spend the rest of your life with me," he told her. "But I can't spend the rest of mine with you."

One day he paid her back for all those pretty boys of hers, falling in love with a woman who knew him better in one day than anyone else could in a lifetime. It never touched his love for Rose, and he hoped she understood there hadn't been a choice to make, but they never talked about that either.

They took her sort-of boyfriend along for the ride, and unintentionally made him feel he wasn't even there. They embraced in front of him, staring into one another's eyes, and he knew there never would be a place for him. So Mickey stayed behind in a Rose-less universe to be a hero, and they went off without him, because they had each other.

One of their triumphant hugs led to a tiny smack on the lips, that both over-thought and neither one mentioned. But that became the norm, until eventually the tiny kisses grew up.

The Doctor saved a planet by making it rain, and they ran into each other's arms in a downpour, kissing like two people who were madly in love. They didn't talk about that, either, but this time there was no need. Why waste words on what they already knew?

The second time they missed a concert and ended up saving a bunch of common people (and the Queen), he admitted domestics weren't quite so frightening anymore.

He made it up to her by taking her to see a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower, then missing it because she rolled over and snogged him at the last minute. "Look at that," he said when they came up for air, "You kiss me and I see shooting stars!"

She crawled into his bed one night, "just to talk." It wasn't long before they were talking about sex, and he was telling her how he always tried to experience it with every one of his bodies and had only missed once. She made sure this wasn't going to be another exception.

Marooned on an impossible planet, faced with life next door to a black hole, she faced the prospect with far less fear than he. After all, it wasn't so bad as long as she had him. Their new closeness was written all over them, and for the first time no one asked them if they were a couple. No one had to.

His faith had always been in his companions, and he'd learned to hold to Rose as his ultimate faith. That's the belief he held on to facing the ultimate unknown, and probable death. And there was still no need to leave any sentimental last words for her. She knew.

An about-to-be intimate moment interrupted by a stupid phone call from her stupid mother, demanding help, or rescue, or her virtue defended, and then pleading for them to stay awhile. "I'll pick you up tomorrow," he said gruffly, but ended up sneaking into her room in the middle of the night. The speculative look from her mum over breakfast made him flee for his life.

He disappeared from her sight and she panicked, then carried on his work for him. She said he was too easy on kids, and was staggered to learn he'd once been a dad. They watched fireworks, and she tempted fate by saying the universe would never, ever split them up. But by that time the Doctor could feel a storm coming on.

The storm, when it came, came from beyond the world, and beyond the next world, bringing with it old enemies and old friends. She told him "forever" and chose to stay by his side, but ultimately she was ripped away.

He blew up a star just to say one last goodbye, and to learn she was carrying on his work, with her family, on another Earth. She cried and said "I love you," and he tried to do the same — but the Time Lord ran out of time. And then, alone, it was his turn to weep.

The universe next door was no longer Rose-less. Only the Doctor was.


End file.
